Michael Fabricant: Notwithstanding the Home Secretary's answer, she will be aware that the things of which she accuses Mike Savage are also illegal in the United States of America, and he has not faced prosecution there. Does she realise how ludicrous her ban is and the disrepute into which she has put this country in the eyes of many right-seeing—and, indeed, left-seeing—people in the United States? Does she also plan to ban Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh and other middle-aged, white, ordinary, American radio presenters?

Alan Campbell: We are looking at that. The Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Coaker), is in discussions on exactly that issue.

Alan Campbell: What we need to be measuring is the length of time that police officers spend on front-line duties, not simply "on the beat". The hon. Gentleman is aware that if police are literally on the beat, they are obviously not involved in front-line policing. As soon as officers undertake some policing, it means they are carrying out front-line duties, which is subject to a different measurement altogether. The figures have been rising in that respect. What we need to do is not just have police officers with more time for front-line police services, but we need to guarantee the number of those officers. Given the funding commitments—or lack of them—from the Conservative party, I am not sure whether police officers will be there to spend time on whatever duties.

Alan Campbell: The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre's "Strategic Threat Assessment" published last month, is the most recent study into child trafficking. It found that 325 children were identified as being potential victims of trafficking or exploitation from data supplied covering the period 1 March 2007 to 29 February 2008.

Anthony Steen: Are the Government aware that they may be on the wrong point, as most children are trafficked from China and Vietnam? That being the case, should not the asylum-seeking provision be lifted for those children, because what we need for all Chinese and Vietnamese children is special screening by the border and immigration services; otherwise, children will always go missing from care homes?

Vernon Coaker: I do not know the particular case that the hon. Gentleman refers to, but of course people can appeal to a chief constable to be taken off the DNA database, and indeed new guidance will be prepared to try to ensure that people in certain situations, maybe such as the situation that he refers to, will be able to get their DNA taken off the database.

Martin Salter: One organisation that has been actively campaigning against settlement rights for the brave Gurkha soldiers is the odious British National party, which is circulating a leaflet defacing the image of the recently fallen Corporal Kumar Pun, a man who gave his life for this country. Would the Minister not agree that it is high time that the Gurkha settlement issue was resolved in favour of the historic debt of honour that this country owes Corporal Pun and his comrades?

Mr. Speaker: I know that that the hon. Gentleman has taken— [ Interruption. ] I will answer. I know that the hon. Gentleman has taken advice, but it is not a substantive motion. It is an early-day motion— [ Interruption. ] The hon. Gentleman is telling me that it is not. Please give me credit for having some experience in the Chair. It is not a substantive motion; it is an early-day motion. The hon. Gentleman knows—

David Heath: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I have a great deal of personal sympathy for the impossible situation in which you find yourself. I have to say that the statement you have made would have been extremely welcome had it been made a few weeks or months ago, but I have very grave doubts, given the appalling situation in which we find ourselves—this midden of the House's own making—that any action taken by Members of this House will restore the trust that we need. Is it not therefore necessary—can you assist us in this, Mr. Speaker—for this House to resolve to accept unequivocally the results of Sir Christopher Kelly's decisions—

Stuart Bell: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. The majority in this House will fully support the statement that you made today. The majority in the House will fully accept that there has never been, in the history of our land, such an attack on the Speaker of the House of Commons. There has never been such an attack on the chairmanship and speakership of this House. Are not that the steps that you are taking, with the steps that Sir Christopher Kelly is taking, the steps that the Prime Minister has asked for and the review of four years of our expenses, all designed to restore public confidence and public trust? Should not the House calm itself down, have a period of reflection, and support you, as the Speaker is entitled to be supported?

Lindsay Hoyle: The hon. Gentleman is very generous with his time. I agree that skills are important, not only for young people but for everyone. Does he share my belief that we should be investing in skills and keeping people in employment through the short-time working subsidy, rather than allowing them to go to the job centre and trying to reskill them there? Would we not be better off investing in employment through the short-time working subsidy?

Eric Illsley: I hope to do that a little later. For now, I just want to address the hon. Gentleman's point about young people not in education, employment or training. It is not true that the Government did not make efforts to reduce the figures. My area of Barnsley has traditionally had a low take-up of post-16 education and training; last year, however, it managed to reduce its number of NEETS from about 15 to 8 per cent. thanks to the valiant efforts of the Connexions service and Government funding. If a constituency such as mine can do that, other areas obviously can. We managed to do it through Government funding and very hard work by our local Connexions service.

Maria Miller: As a fellow Hampshire MP, my hon. Friend may be aware of an organisation called ITeC in my constituency. It has a fantastic record of success—87 per cent. of its students, who are between the ages of 16 and 24, go forward to be placed in employment—yet it is facing significant cuts because of LSC funding problems. It is also facing the prospect of cutting up to 50 places before the end of July—the sorts of places that would help my constituents to get back into work. Would he care to comment on that?

David Willetts: The one thing that colleges all say is that when they were funded by the Further Education Funding Council, they were trusted to exercise discretion, which meant that they could tackle local problems such as NEETs without being funded by the Learning and Skills Council simply to produce paper qualifications. Colleges look back upon that freedom to run their own affairs very fondly indeed, and we are committed to restoring it to them. The best way to ensure efficiency and high performance from colleges is to give them the freedom to run their own affairs, and that is what we are committed to doing.
	I want to pursue the important question of exactly why it took almost a year, from the first report by the Learning and Skills Council, in February 2008, for the Secretary of State to make his first public comment on the matter, which he did in late January 2009. Indeed, even now we are still waiting for him to come to the House to make a proper oral statement about what is happening to college funding. It is now 15 months since the problem was first identified. When he last made a written statement to the House, he said:
	"I will make a further statement to the House after the recess".—[ Official Report, 1 April 2009; Vol. 490, c. 72WS.]
	We have already had that recess; in fact, we are about to have another one, and still there is no sign of the Secretary of State volunteering any information. At every stage, the information has had to be secured by us, making freedom of information requests, tabling written questions and calling debates. It is a pity that at no point has he felt able to come to the House to volunteer information in Government time about what is happening to our colleges.

David Willetts: No, I want to make some more progress.
	We are told that one criterion will be whether a project is shovel-ready, but there will be others. What about the projects that are part of the wider regeneration of a town or district, for example? What priority will go to them? We also need to know what will happen to those colleges that have made commitments to buy land or commitments to move. How much weight will be attached to that consideration?
	It will be tempting—and I suspect that the Secretary of State will succumb to the temptation—to say that the crucial issue will be to knock down the building costs charged by the building industry, and indeed there might be some savings to be made in that way. Will he acknowledge, however, that one reason that these projects have turned out to be so expensive is the extraordinarily cumbersome regulatory procedures surrounding them, involving preferred builders and preferred planning consultants who might be approved of for one region but not for another? Many colleges have told me that they could have delivered their capital project at a much more modest price than it was ultimately billed for, if only they had been free from the bureaucracy of the LSC.
	Will the Secretary of State also explain exactly how costs that have already been incurred by colleges will be treated? According to the Association of Colleges, £187 million worth of expenditure that was thought to be part of capital projects might already have been incurred, but if those projects are no longer going ahead, that money could count as current expenditure instead. Counting it as current expenditure could drive colleges into deficit. I see my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) in his place. He, too, has raised that matter, because it affects his local college. Some colleges might find themselves in breach of banking covenants if their current expenditure budgets are suddenly hit. Therefore, we need authoritative advice about the accounting treatment in these circumstances and about the prospects for colleges to get redress for the costs that they have already incurred.
	It is interesting to look through the minutes, because another revealing item from them suggests one of the reasons for the secrecy surrounding all these matters. The minutes state:
	"Members asked that a clear action plan be in place to respond to any legal challenges arising from its decision to carryover project approvals from its December 2008 meeting".
	One suspects that the LSC is legally vulnerable when colleges have incurred these items of expenditure; again, we are waiting to hear some authoritative guidance from the Secretary of State.
	Members of all parties will be concerned about the problems facing colleges in their constituencies and I want to give as many of them as possible the opportunity to raise their specific concerns. However, as well as noting the individual injustices and grievances, we should not lose sight of what this tells us about the importance of investing in skills in a recession and this Government's failure to give FE colleges the opportunity to do just that.
	If we wanted to know what was wrong with this Government's approach to skills, I could think of no more vivid example than the recent report from the UK Commission for Employment and Skills. The Secretary of State would not need to read even the executive summary; all he needs to read are the statistics on the cover, which show the international ranking for the three levels of skills. For the highest level, the UK's position is 12th internationally. The Government's ambition is that we should be eighth by 2020, but the report projects that, on current policies, we will be 10th. For intermediate skills, we are currently 18th in the international league table. The Government's aim is for us to be in the top eight, but the report says that on current policies we will go down to 21st by 2020. As regards low skills—we have a particular obligation to people with low skills because the issue is fundamental to social mobility—our current international position is 17th. The Government's aim is for us to be eighth by 2020, but the independent report suggests that, at this rate under this Government's policies, we will be 23rd internationally in 2020. That is why we need a different approach and why I commend the motion to the House.

John Denham: We will come on the Learning and Skills Council in due course, but I point out to the hon. Gentleman that, yes, I do expect to be told. One of the reasons I commissioned the Foster report—it did not just appear out of nowhere; I commissioned it before anyone had a clear picture of the size and scale of the problem—was that I wanted to understand what had happened. That is the way I have always worked as a Minister. I gave him a hard time when he was a Minister and I was Opposition spokesman, and I think I often told him things that he did not know, but Ministers do and should expect to be informed. Where that does not happen, clearly it is a matter of regret and we usually follow such things through.
	The hon. Member for Havant set out a series of charges. I intend to rebut each one. I will set out clearly why he is wrong and why his criticisms are misplaced, and say why the Government should be proud, although never complacent, about our record. I will do more than that: I will set out why, according to all the evidence we have on the Opposition's record and their current plans, they pose a threat to everything that has been achieved in recent years.
	I warn any Conservative Member who plans to intervene on me that I will challenge them to tell their constituents the truth about how Conservative plans would hit their constituents and their colleges.

John Denham: The hon. Lady clearly has not quite grasped the gist of the debate so far. What I have said—very clearly—is that we have far more people in training today than we had planned to have in training today. I have also said that in the coming year we will train the same amount of people that we had planned to train. Because we have had the great success of training people early and because budgets are not unlimited, we are having to adjust the budgets of training providers, but I say to the hon. Lady that this is not a cut. We are not reducing the number of people being trained. More people will have been trained over this two-year period than we had planned. Next year, as many people will be planned for as the providers would have been expecting. I have acknowledged tensions in the handling of that, but that is the picture that she needs to take back to her college. She should say to it, "The good news is that, despite the fact that the training system in this country is currently training more people than it had planned, it is still confident that it will be planning for as many people next year as it had set out." That is enormously good news, and I hope I can rely on the hon. Lady—I am absolutely sure that I can—to take that message back to Basingstoke, rather than to return there and say that the situation is different. The LSC will send the detailed allocations out to colleges as soon as possible.
	I have talked about the investment that the Budget enables us to make in the future of young people, and which the hon. Member for Havant and his party would not match. That is why it is so extraordinary that the hon. Gentleman raises the NEETs issue. There is an old debate here, and at the crux of it are two issues. The first issue is the hon. Gentleman's reluctance to give the Government the credit for having 1 million more young people in education, work and training than 10 years ago. That was not an act of God or an accident; it was something that Government policy set out to achieve. The second reason we have disagreed with him is that he has always made the most of the figures by including in his list of NEETs young mothers who are at home bringing up families. I always feel that he comes here to attack the Government over NEETs and then goes outside to make speeches about the importance of family policy. I have always acknowledged that we should focus on a smaller group of young people who seriously are detached from the labour market—from education, work and training. In some ways, that is the debate that he and I have had with great regularity over the past two years.
	Let us acknowledge that today there is a more pressing debate, because times are harder for young people. We are determined not to write off a generation of young people, as the Conservative party did in the recession of the late 80s and early 90s. That is why we are raising the participation age over the next few years to keep young people in education and training and work with training—that practical measure to help young people is opposed by the Conservatives—and why we are putting a further £655 million into 16 to 18 learning this year and next to enable colleges and sixth forms to meet rising demand. The Conservatives' policies could not match that investment, and the hon. Gentleman cannot honestly match our guaranteed offer of work and training to young people who cannot find work for a long time. I am happy to debate NEETs. It is a serious issue and we recognise the challenges facing young people today, so I must say to him that investing in those young people and creating opportunities for work, for training and for education is how we must tackle the number of young people who are doing none of those things, not cutting the support we provide for them.

Gordon Marsden: Does my right hon. Friend acknowledge that work-based learning is a key element and that in my own county of Lancashire that grew by 30 to 35 per cent. between 2006 and 2007? Does he also agree that part of this is about using frameworks and structures in which employers and the general public can have confidence and that the Conservative party, by its failure to get wholeheartedly behind the diplomas process and, indeed, aspects of the apprenticeships process, has hindered rather than assisted the process?

Adam Afriyie: He's had 12 years to sort it out but failed.

John Denham: The hon. Gentleman asks me about 12 years and whether a Government should have managed, within that period, to transform all the legacy that his party left. I have to say no, but we have made a very good start—we have done much better than we would have done with the zero capital budget that we found.
	The second point to make about the background is that the Conservative party, despite its history, fails to give any credit—ever—to the huge scale of investment that has been and is being made in FE capital. I would have a lot more time for the criticisms that are made by the Conservatives if they acknowledged the scale of what is being achieved. Since 2001, 700 projects, at nearly 330 colleges, have been funded and in those areas that has transformed the FE estate for learners. In the current spending review we were committed to, and will spend, £2.3 billion, and that was on top of the £2 billion spent between 1997 and 2008. It is true that despite the huge scale of that programme, its management by the LSC has raised the expectations and hopes of colleges. I can understand the feelings of those who do not know where they stand or feel that they might not get their colleges within the time scale that they had hoped. That is why, in the recent Budget, my Department was allocated £1.2 billion on top of the investment that we had already received, enabling us to get vital schemes going within the next two years and to plan for the future.
	By contrast, the hon. Member for Havant went to the Association of Colleges conference last October, where he was asked whether he could guarantee that the Conservatives would deliver the planned spending even for 2010-11. He told the conference that he could not. That is the truth. While we are working through the LSC and with the AOC to begin to prioritise more schemes and to get them under way, a Government with the hon. Gentleman in it would cut the schemes that are already under way.
	We are doing what the resolution calls for—or, rather, the LSC is working with the AOC to work out priorities and to deal with the difficult task of prioritisation. The LSC is out to consultation at the moment and is working with the AOC on those criteria. When I have received advice from the LSC on that, it will be in a position to publish the criteria.

John Denham: I recognise the points that my hon. Friend raises, and the way in which she has argued the case for her constituency. Of course she is right that the relationship between a college programme and regeneration must be one of the criteria. I do not want to get drawn into the criteria debate. I simply say, and I hope that the House will understand, that it is relatively simple to list the issues that should be taken into account; the challenge is to decide what weighting should be given to the different factors, so that when everybody looks at the final outcome, people at least feel that it is fair and consistent, although it will be impossible to produce an outcome in which everybody is happy. That work is going on at the moment.
	I should make some progress, and bring my remarks to a close. The hon. Member for Havant repeated his criticism about the reduction in the number of non-vocational leisure courses as a result of our having prioritised training for work. That is one of the reasons he wants to scrap Train to Gain, but his priority is wrong. It is not just me saying so; the CBI and the Institute of Directors have both said that Train to Gain is the right policy. The CBI said that it was
	"concerned by plans"—
	that is, Opposition plans—
	"to divert money from the Train to Gain programme, as this is designed to ensure that public funds are invested in training that delivers improved business and workforce performance."
	The Institute of Directors said, in response to the Opposition's proposal:
	"The Train to Gain scheme is not perfect, requires greater flexibility and needs to promote higher level skills as well as the basics. But the principle of the initiative has great merit and the focus of policy should be on improving the service rather than diverting funds away."
	I am as keen on learning for its own sake as anyone. That is why I worked across Government to launch the White Paper, "The Learning Revolution", and why we have just opened bids for a £20-million fund to get informal learning going in new ways and new venues. However, the real priority today must be the skills that we need to get Britain out of recession.
	Finally, let me turn to the hon. Gentleman's proposals for new investment, because I find them a little distasteful. We are talking about not party political point-scoring, but the hopes and aspirations of an anxious generation of young people, who deserve to be treated honestly and with respect. When he announced his £600-million package, we could not understand where the money was coming from. Then the Conservatives told us: it was to come from the cuts that they had already announced—the £610 million of cuts to my Department's budget for this year, announced by the Leader of the Opposition on 5 January. I wrote to the hon. Member for Havant on 15 January, asking what he would cut. He never replied. That is the disgraceful scam revealed. The idea is to claim that one could cut £600 million without saying how, and then publish a really attractive list of proposals funded from the same non-existent cuts. The point is that that is not the way to treat young people or their parents. They deserve to be treated honestly and with respect. The hon. Gentleman proposed this debate, but I think that he made a mistake.

Stephen Williams: As usual, the hon. Gentleman makes a pertinent point. I could be cruel and mention the mistake that the Government made in their decision on equivalent and lower qualifications cuts last year. One consequence is that the ability of universities to offer evening classes to their community—for instance, in Bristol, where people from all walks of life can come together to study for a course that does not necessarily lead to a certificate at the end of it—will be taken away. Many universities will probably start closing down continuing education departments in the future as a direct result of a decision that the Secretary of State instructed the Higher Education Funding Council to take, and many people will lose out on the introduction to learning that the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) mentioned.
	I come back to further education colleges. I shall not repeat everything that the hon. Member for Havant said, or all the many points that have been made as we discussed the issue over recent months, both in the Chamber and in Westminster Hall. Last week I visited Sussex Downs college and met the principal there, and the principal of Plumpton college, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker). These colleges are in a difficult situation. They have not, under the Learning and Skills Council's criteria, got as far as approval in detail, but none the less, they have well worked-up schemes.
	Plumpton college had a three-stage scheme. Stages one and two have already progressed and stage three was the conclusion. Sussex Downs college has invested millions of pound in professional fees in building up the case that the LSC required for it to make its application. It was specifically encouraged by the LSC to come forward with ambitious plans. The Secretary of State asked the hon. Member for Havant for an example of encouragement having been given to a college to come forward with ambitious plans. There is one for him. But now those ambitious plans do not look as though they will be realised. Many other colleges throughout the country are in the same situation.
	We need certainty from the Government soon as to what will happen both to those capital schemes and to the professional costs that the colleges have already incurred in working up their plans. As the hon. Gentleman said, we also need some transparency from the Learning and Skills Council. Unlike the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the LSC does not routinely publish its minutes on its website to show how it arrived at its decisions.
	The Budget, which has not featured much in the discussion so far, announced a further £300 million in order to try and apply some sticking-plaster solutions to the further education capital funding fiasco. As well as that sum being given to the FE sector, the Budget contains a target for efficiency gains for the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills to find. I understand that the target over the rest of the comprehensive spending review period for the FE and skills part of the Department is £340 million. On the one hand, the Government promise something to sort out a problem that they have created, but, on the other, they are going to take it away through efficiency savings.
	The provision of adequate buildings is not the only barrier to participation in learning; there are other costs, too. The motion refers to the training costs of those who are
	"over the age of 25",
	although I do not remember the hon. Gentleman speaking to it specifically in his speech. There is, nevertheless, an absurd anomaly in our financial structure, whereby, once someone reaches 25, it is not deemed appropriate for the state to fund their first participation in a level 3 qualification. We are in a time of recession and the work force are ageing, and people in a dynamic economy, whether in a recession or prosperous, will have to retrain throughout their working lives, so enabling adults over the age of 25 to acquire a level 3 qualification free of cost should be a priority.
	There is also the question of encouraging employers to take on more apprentices. For small employers, in particular, the cost of off-the-job training is often an important barrier, so re-allocating the growth in the Train to Gain budget of £500 million over the forthcoming years would make an enormous difference to employers and their ability to take more people into adult apprenticeships. The Government have set themselves some ambitious training and educational attainment targets for 2020 as a result of the Leitch report. However, they will be much harder to realise if we do not have investment in further education and skills or ensure that it is secure for the future.
	One of the most interesting parts of the hon. Gentleman's motion which, again, he seemed to skate over in his speech, was the section about science, technology, engineering and maths—STEM—subjects. Last week, it was my pleasure to welcome to the House some Bristol university young engineers and a graduate engineer who are working with Airbus in Bristol. They are taking part in a national project, sponsored by Airbus, to discuss the relationship between aviation and climate change. I have said many times in such debates that there is a consensus around what we are going to do about our other 2020 targets—apart from the Leitch targets—on climate change. If we are to meet our ambitious targets for a carbon neutral economy, or for a much lower dependence on carbon, we will need more scientists, engineers and technicians. Otherwise, it will be impossible to realise those aims. If we do not have the people to construct the wind farms, service the dynamos or expand nuclear energy, although my party does not support that, we will not be able to meet our 2020 climate change targets.
	The problem with STEM subjects begins right the way back in our secondary schools, as do many of our problems in education, so we need to enthuse children to take part in science and engineering subjects. In that respect, I praise the work of Bristol university's ChemLabS outreach programme, which goes to schools all over the west country and invites pupils and teachers into the chemistry laboratories at Bristol university to show children experiments, retrain teachers in experimentation and make science exciting and appealing. As ever, information, advice and guidance are absolutely essential, too.
	There is a big gender balance in engineering. When I met those five individuals last week, I said to them, "There's only one problem with you: you're all men." That is a problem for the engineering profession, but the profession itself has to do some work, too. Government is not always the answer to every problem; the engineering profession must do more to raise the esteem in which it is held. Two or three years ago in Bristol, we commemorated the bicentenary of Brunel's birth. In the 19th century, Brunel was a celebrity figure comparable to many well-known politicians, authors and artists, but we do not have a celebrity engineer at the moment. There is a gender balance and high participation in catering; perhaps engineering needs to find equivalents to Jamie and Delia to encourage young people to take part.
	There is a national emergency; we are in a deep recession. In his concluding remarks, the Secretary of State referred to the "anxious generation" of young people who are leaving school and do not know what is ahead of them—particularly if they aspire to go to university. As we already know, there is to be a crisis in respect of finding sufficient places for those who get the right A-levels or other level 3 qualifications sufficient for university entry in September this year; it looks as if there will not be enough university places to meet the demand. Those who will leave as graduates in just a couple of months' time, after doing their finals and receiving their degrees, will enter the most uncertain graduate job market for decades.
	There is a stark statistic from the last deep recession of the 1980s. I hope that we will not see in this recession a mirror image of what happened to adults, particularly those over 40, who lost their jobs in previous recessions. Many such people in south Wales, where I grew up, and other depressed industrial areas of the country, did not find another job for a couple of decades afterwards; they were never able to return to full productive work. In this recession, we must all agree that investment in skills for those people is absolutely essential. The issue is not only about young people.

Eric Illsley: I want to make a few comments about Barnsley college in the context of the motion and the amendment to it. Obviously, I will speak about the Building Colleges for the Future programme as it affects the college. I shall go on to say a little about the college's performance in relation to the motions before the House.
	As the House knows from previous debates, Barnsley college was part of the Building Colleges for the Future programme. Like other colleges, it had a four-phase college programme. Two phases have been completed on budget and to time, but unfortunately the third phase, which started towards the end of 2008, was halted in January when the funding was stopped. Unfortunately, the college had started demolition work on its Old Mill Lane site. The town centre has been left with a completely demolished area, which was the flagship part of Barnsley college.
	Construction stopped. Miller Construction, the contractors, had to stop work; its contractors have been laid off and some have been made redundant. We are now waiting for the results of the Foster review and what follows on from it. We Barnsley MPs have had meetings with Ministers and the Prime Minister to try to find a way forward. We have a real difficulty: there is a demolition site where part of the college once was. The building programme has been delayed for several months and it looks as if that will continue.
	When we met with representatives of the Yorkshire and the Humber learning and skills council, we were told that the Foster review would draw up criteria that, hopefully, would be considered by the end of April. We were also told that decisions would be made by the beginning of May. That has not happened. The Foster report has been produced, the criteria are being drawn up and the meetings are being held. However, the announcement on which colleges will go forward will be made, we hope, on 3 June—that, at least, is what the colleges were led to believe. Since then, it looks as though the timetable may have been reviewed. In discussions with the college principal as recently as Friday, it came to light that perhaps the decisions will be made only tentatively on 3 June. It should be borne in mind that the applications of 145 colleges will be decided on, and only a handful will go forward. We are obviously anxious, as are all the other colleges, that our application should be proceeded with, because we do not have accommodation for our students. We will have temporary buildings, but not the buildings that we had hoped for.
	The LSC drew up its so-called "Key Steps and Timetable", with five steps and a timetable for progressing the situation:
	"Cross LSC National Officers group meeting to score potential projects against criteria w/c 18 May...LSC National Officers group send recommendations on projects to be funded to LSC National Capital Committee enhanced with regional council chairs attending w/c 18 May...LSC National Capital Committee meeting to score potential projects against criteria enhanced with regional council chairs attending w/c 25 May...National Capital Committee send recommendations to LSC National Council 27 May...LSC National Council meeting to approve National Capital Committee recommendations 3 June."
	So far, so good. However, that appears to have been amended, with the contractors to the LSC now stating:
	"3rd June 09—Discussion on how many and which projects will be selected as the initial (Priority 1) tranche to go forward (selection only—not approval)...The selected colleges will then have to go through the VfM"—
	value for money—
	"process to reduce costs which will comprise...5 week period post 3rd June to sort out project/tender costs and achieve savings as required...6 weeks after that to finalise all costs...Final approval during August 09...September 09 Start on site."
	If that timetable is applied to Barnsley college, assuming that we are successful in getting our programme back on track, that will mean a nine-month delay in the programme going forward. None of the colleges decided upon on 3 June will be able to start work until September.
	It is possible that because Barnsley college is halfway through the programme and has already gone through most of the paperwork, planning process and so on, those post-3 June criteria may not apply. I sincerely hope not. We hear about a value for money process to reduce costs and to achieve savings, but Barnsley college has already been required by the Foster review to reduce the third-phase costs from £42 million to £33 million, and the programme had to be quickly redesigned to accommodate that, so we have already lost £9 million of our project funding through the consultation process and the problems that have been created. In addition, the college has spent £12 million of its reserves and borrowings and has a substantial interest bill to meet in 2010. If our college is not selected on 3 June, it will face real financial difficulties, because it cannot expand its student base on the basis that it had hoped in order to meet the extra costs. The refurbishment and redevelopment were carried out on the basis that the student body would increase and the college would receive further funding to help to meet the costs of what has been spent.
	It is extremely important to Barnsley that the college capital rebuilding programme is completed. We are extremely concerned not only for the third phase, which is to rebuild a demolition site, but for the fourth phase, which is to rebuild the sixth-form college provision.
	Barnsley college deals with 90 per cent. of sixth-form teaching in Barnsley, yet we are contemplating not having a sixth-form college if the final phase of the project goes by the wayside. It is important to look at those items, and the time scale and the reason for its sliding further from 3 June—as far as September. Given the intervention of summer holidays and so on, that start date is likely to slip even further.
	The refurbishment programme is important to Barnsley college because our record on post-16 education has historically never been good, but it has improved in recent years and continues to improve, and the college is in a strong position to ensure that it meets Government and local priorities. That was shown in its annual Ofsted inspection, which took place in March and resulted in four "significant progress" and three "reasonable progress" judgments—one of the best results in the country. The college has an ambitious business plan to consolidate and grow its success in surpassing targets and meeting national and local priorities.
	We will have 300 more FE-funded learners later this year—a 9 per cent. increase on last year. Student numbers in that category are currently 241 above the LSC target. We have recruited 1,830 adult FE-funded learners—100 more than the LSC target. There are approximately 150 more learners than the previous year in that category—a 6 per cent. increase. We have heard much about Train to Gain this afternoon. The number of learners under that scheme is 198 more than the LSC target.
	There are currently 20 per cent. more applications for the 16-to-18 programmes. That is wonderful news for Barnsley. We have heard about the problems of NEETs—indeed, I intervened on the Opposition spokesperson because we have worked hard in Barnsley to try to reduce the number of young people in that category. A 20 per cent. increase in the number of applications for post-16 education is therefore encouraging.
	Adult success rates have improved by 8 per cent. in the past three years. The Train to Gain success rate is 91 per cent.—well above the national average. That is not something that one has associated with Barnsley's education in the past few years.
	The apprenticeships programme has rapidly expanded, with success rates of 81 per cent.—again, well above the national average. The college will deliver the diploma programme—10 separate diploma lines—in September. It has been approved to provide 14 diploma lines, and the remainder will start in September 2010.
	On worklessness, the college has just been successful in winning a contract to improve the employability and skills base of long-term unemployed people who live in Barnsley. That is great news and a success story for Barnsley college.
	However, all that will go to waste if we get it wrong or if the capital programme is not reinstated quickly. We have already considered redundancies for the college's construction programme. I am concerned about whether we can deliver all that increased education provision in the forthcoming academic year and the subsequent one. Without the college rebuilding programme, we will struggle. Again, I urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to examine the timetable and try to encourage the LSC to stick to the time scales that it has set out in its programme. I also urge him to try to get decisions made and, particularly for Barnsley, allow the programme to continue. Otherwise, we have only half a college.

David Curry: Although we are, of course, all interested in how we got into this mess, I am much more interested in how we get out of it. It would be easy to give a litany of complaints and simply recite the virtues of one's own college—I will not omit to do that. However, I want to pay tribute to the LSC's regional staff, who deal with Yorkshire and Humber. They are deeply embarrassed by what has happened, they are doing their best to help and I would not like the contamination of mismanagement at the centre to be attributed to everybody who works for that organisation, which will be replaced in any case.
	I want to begin by talking about the district of Craven. The north Pennines is fairly remote and has an economy that rests on extremely fragile pillars. A lot of the area is a national park, but tourism has a relatively low value and is predominantly made up of day visitors—indeed, many people spend precious little when they get into the dales. The area depends on agriculture, and we all know that some sectors have experienced extraordinary difficulties. Indeed, the Rural Payments Agency was probably ahead in the charts as the agency that had made the biggest financial mess, until the Learning and Skills Council came along as a late competitor for that accolade, and there are still problems in getting the money to farmers.
	There is also the hidden industry of all areas of the countryside, which is looking after the elderly. Anyone who goes to any significant village in my constituency will find households looking after elderly people and an awful lot of people working part time to make money to supplement low income being earned elsewhere in the family, enabling people to maintain, for example, an agriculture holding. There is also a host of small businesses. We have the Skipton building society, which is the giant in the area—a very prudent giant, as a matter of fact—but there is also a huge constellation of small businesses, ranging from micro breweries, of which there has been a refreshing multiplication, to those involved in package recycling and other tiny operations.
	Craven is therefore an area of high employment. I do not claim that the demands of Craven rest on economic hardship in the way that it might be experienced in places such as Barnsley, which the hon. Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley) spoke about. However, although there is high employment, there is also low pay and a lot of part-time employment. If anything were to illustrate the vulnerability of Craven's economy, it is foot and mouth disease, which simultaneously shut down agriculture and tourism. That demonstrates the urgency of finding an economic base that is more diversified and less vulnerable to catastrophic events.
	Many people in Craven would also complain of a draining of public services from the area, as there has been pressure to introduce economies in public expenditure. The police presence, as well as the rank of the police establishment, and many other public services, if not the ability of the people doing the serving, have been seen to be reduced.
	What Craven needs is a much better skills base. Indeed, Skipton building society and the smallest small businesses both complain about their difficulty in recruiting people with sufficient skills, whether they be IT or more basic skills. Craven also needs much better facilities in winter, so that there is a tourist offer in the winter months to supplement the tourist offer in the summer, and a vigorous small business sector that can take advantage of the spread of broadband, which is not yet universal in my constituency, and the exceptional environmental advantages of Craven. Broughton hall, with its sophisticated business park, is the exception, not the rule.
	There are also particular needs that stem from the fact that Craven is not merely a rural area; rather, a great deal of it is upland, which is the most difficult kind of rural area. There is a huge difference between a rural area in East Anglia, where someone could strike a billiard ball and watch it go for miles, and my constituency, which straddles the Pennines. In addition, Craven is the only area in North Yorkshire that has selective education. The two excellent selective schools in Skipton—Ermysted's and Skipton girls high school—are outstanding, but they ought to be outstanding, given the sociology of North Yorkshire and the selection process. However, that means that it is incredibly important to ensure adequate provision for the 16 to 18-year-olds who do not come out of the selective system.
	That brings me to Craven college in Skipton, which is at the heart of a series of interlocking programmes designed to address the broad economic disadvantages and the particular sociology of Craven. Ten years ago, Craven college had between 500 and 600 full-time students in one year group, and about 2,000 part-time students. Now it has 1,600 full-time students, of whom 1,250 are 16 to 18-year-olds drawn from some 80 schools—the college serves not only Craven but a huge rural constituency that goes way beyond the boundaries of Craven itself—and some 5,000 people in part-time employment in any one year.
	So the college's expansion has been constant, and it has taken place using very limited resources and in the context of certain disadvantages, which I shall explain. First, it operates on 11 sites. My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) was complaining that his college had to operate in 1960s buildings. How lucky it is! Two of our buildings are Victorian, and the college operates in 11 sites across Skipton. This has two implications: the first relates to costs and the division of effort; the second is the very real health and safety problem of operating in buildings that are far from being fit for purpose.
	A further disadvantage of being in a rural catchment area is that it is often difficult to achieve the necessary critical mass of students to make a course viable. It might not be too difficult to assemble nine or 10 people who want to study the same subject at the same time and in the same place in a metropolitan area, but it is difficult to do so in a rural area. That means that the college is punished in the sense that it does not get the funding, but there are also fewer opportunities because it cannot achieve the critical mass necessary to realise them. The rurality issue has not been addressed in the funding of colleges of further education.
	I said that Craven college was at the heart of the regeneration programme for the Craven area. There is a new campus planned. It is in the third tier of progress; the work is awaiting approval, but the plan is very well developed. It is part of one of the wider regeneration programmes that so many colleagues have mentioned today. In particular, it will incorporate a complex for climbing and caving. That might sound eccentric, but climbing and caving are major tourist attractions in that part of the Pennines and the Yorkshire dales, and a knowledge of those subjects will assist the development of winter facilities and enhance what is a unique selling point economically in the area.
	If the activities of the college could be brought together on one site, it would gain through much greater economies of scale in terms of costs and teaching efficiency, and such a move would also make a huge difference to the social environment of the college. It would enable all sorts of interactions to take place between the students that are impossible if they end their day in 11 different places around the town.
	So what is going to happen? There have been two recent events, on the first of which I would like the advice of the Minister. Within the past few days, the Learning and Skills Council has offered to pay half the £356,000 fees that have been spent on developing the Craven college project, provided that the head of the college signs on the dotted line by noon tomorrow. Should he sign, or is the LSC offering an out-of-court settlement against the threat of a legal action to recover a greater proportion of the fees, such as I understand some colleges are nurturing?
	I have had discussions with Craven college, with which I have dealt in every year since I have been a Member of Parliament, and I have to say that we have not carried the fiery cross around the countryside. We have not said that the college was going to collapse or that further education in Craven was going to come to a halt. We will struggle through, as we have always done. So we are not being alarmist. We are trying to be responsible in dealing with this very real issue, but the head of the college faces a real dilemma over how he should respond to that offer. I pay tribute to the regional staff of the LSC for that offer, because I think they are trying to be helpful.
	We have also talked about Train to Gain. Craven college was harried to step up its Train to Gain activities. It was positively cajoled to expand its programme. It has done so, and it was expecting to spend about £1.6 million on such provision up to the end of the academic year that we have been talking about. That money has been stopped in its tracks overnight, and the provision has been capped at some £1 million. There was no warning of that at all. So having gone out to employers to persuade them to sign up to the Train to Gain programme, the college now has to go back and say, "Sorry, we can't deliver on the very programmes that we encouraged you to sign up for a short while ago."
	What is the way forward? We know that the Government have promised £300 million a year in capital expenditure until 2013, and we also know that there are going to be some transparent new criteria based on need rather than on "first come, first served", with the deadline set for spring 2010—still a long way away. I ask the Minister to ensure that when those criteria are drawn up, there is a fair assessment of rural needs.
	Rural needs are not simply an offshoot of a national need; they respond to difference economic and social circumstances, and entirely different definitions of how to be efficient apply in serving the sort of wide rural area that my college serves. I do not want to do down any of the metropolitan areas; we are on the edge of Keighley, and we take students from Keighley as a matter of fact. What I do want to ensure, however, is that there is fair crack of the whip for the rural areas I am talking about. In other words, whether we are judged to have succeeded or not, we want to able to say that at least it was a fair call and a fair judgment. We want to be judged by meaningful criteria that we are capable of delivering and fulfilling, not against criteria that are designed for entirely different circumstances.
	I would ask that all programmes be started from scratch. We should start with a blank sheet of paper and the all programmes that have reached a certain degree of maturity should be examined in the light of those different criteria in the different circumstances. A set of programme priorities should be drawn up that reflect the new criteria—not simply the "first come, first served" basis. If the Government really want the best bang for their buck, if they really want to ensure that their money is being spent as well as possible and if they really want to be assured of value for money, they must do that. If they want to be able to turn around and say they have sorted out an appalling mess in an equitable way so that people feel that fairness has been applied to all sections of the country in all the different circumstances of the country, that is what they should do.
	I hope that the Government will be fair in addressing those problems. I have not gone into too much detail today, as we will be joining the long procession of people intending to meet the poor Minister—he will be able to do a "Mastermind" on colleges of further education, I suspect, in a couple of months' time—and we can provide the detail then. If the Minister does do what I have suggested, Craven will continue to give him, as it has always has done, the biggest possible bang for the buck. The benefits will then be spread over a huge area of rural England.

Hugh Bayley: It is a great pleasure to follow two other Yorkshire Members in this debate.
	Our country is in the middle of an extremely severe recession—the first global recession since the 1930s. It is global in the sense that, for the first time since the 1930s, global output is likely to fall. This recession, as we all know, was triggered by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States. It spread quickly around the world because of the globalised nature of the banking and financial services sector these days, and it was amplified by light-touch regulation in this and other OECD countries. One of the lessons to be learned from this recession is that the Thatcher-Reagan doctrine that private institutions are always best regulated by themselves rather than the state has come to an end. I do not want more regulation, but I do want smarter regulation so that the lessons of the recession are learned.
	Before I turn specifically to deal with further education, let me say that I chair the Economics and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. The week before last, our committee was in Washington DC to meet the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to discuss the recession. They predicted that, from the peak to the trough of the recession, global output is likely to fall by 3 to 4 per cent. They also say that if Governments such as ours and other OECD Governments had not adopted fiscal stimulus packages, global output would fall by something like 9 per cent.
	Let me explain the difference. If global output falls by 3 or 4 per cent., it will mean a very severe recession—more severe than any since the second world war. But if output falls by 9 per cent., we will be in the territory that existed between the two world wars when there was a decade-long depression and unemployment soared for years at a time. The fiscal stimulus is a necessary response and it is right to put Government funding behind education and training, particularly vocational training. I was pleased to see hundreds of millions of pounds being set aside in the Budget for that purpose.
	It is extremely important to invest in skills—both in vocational training and in broad liberal education—so that we see benefits in our national economy and so that individual citizens in our country see the benefits of jobs and job security. It is important to do so now, so that the country benefits when the upturn comes. We do not want to make the same mistake as was made when the Conservatives were in power and people were simply parked on benefits during the recession, without the funding for training, and vocational training in particular, that we have at the moment.
	During the 12 years that the Labour party has been in government, a strong platform has been created within further education to provide the skills training that we need. In my constituency, in 1996-97, some £12.1 million was allocated to York college and the York sixth-form college, which was a separate institution. Since then, the two have merged, and in 2008-09, the budget was £20.5 million—an increase of £8.4 million, or 69 per cent.
	It is not just in York that additional resources have gone into further education. There are eight colleges in York and North Yorkshire. Two are specialist colleges—Henshaws college, a specialist college in Harrogate that provides education and training for people with visual impairment and additional physical or learning difficulties, and Askham Bryan college, one of the largest land-based colleges in the country—and there are six more general further education or sixth-form colleges. Between them, and including Craven college, which the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) spoke about, they work with some 50,000 young people and have a combined turnover of £70 million a year.
	In the past five years, the Government have allocated some £80 million of capital to improve the colleges. They have partnerships with almost 10,000 businesses and train some 7,000 employees a year. They have degree and higher-level programmes for more than 2,000 students. The colleges in York and North Yorkshire educate nearly 12,000 16 to 18-year-olds—more than all the school sixth forms in York and North Yorkshire put together.
	It is important to have the right balance of numbers to guarantee choice for young people at the age of 16 between courses and between settings—school and further education. The two Departments—the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills and the Department for Children, Schools and Families—need to talk further about how the school sixth form presumption works. In 2007-08, which is the latest year for which I have figures, there were 4,129 16 to 19-year-olds from York in college and 1,079 in school sixth forms. Each individual 16-year-old has a choice about whether to attend one of the five schools in York that has a sixth form or whether to go to York college, or indeed one of the other colleges, such as Askham Bryan or another further education college close to York.
	The schools provide continuity and familiarity for the students. They are smaller and, as a result, provide a narrower range of subjects. They provide extremely good education. York college, like the schools, achieves excellent A-level results, but its curriculum provides about 40 subjects, including a full range of modern languages, which none of the school sixth forms can provide; specialist subjects such as archaeology and ancient history, which have a particular purpose and which we have a need for in a city such as York; and specialist art courses such as photography. Indeed, Freddy Bulmer, an 18-year-old at York college, has just won first prize in the national Colleges on Camera competition. His winning photograph shows the impact that the £65 million investment by the Government and the college in the new York college has had on him and his fellow students. It is good to see excellence coming from a further education college.
	Perhaps I should tell hon. Members that four years ago, after the general election, I did what I usually do after elections—commissioned a local artist to make a limited-edition print to celebrate life in York. The artist I commissioned on that occasion was a young man from York college, Michael Kirkman, who produced a fabulous print of building work at York hospital. That was his choice of subject, which he felt summed up the type of life that people live in York now. I am pleased to say that one of his prints is in the collection of York art gallery while another hangs in the boardroom of York hospital. Several others hang in GP surgeries around the city—it is marvellous work. That, again, shows that colleges can provide excellence at the highest level.
	Recently, Archbishop Holgate's school used the sixth-form presumption to establish its own sixth form. There were concerns from other 16-to-18 educational providers in the area that it might dilute provision elsewhere. There were discussions between the head of Archbishop Holgate's school—an old and venerable institution headed by John Harris, who is a head teacher I respect enormously—and the local education authority. They agreed that there was already good level 3 A-level provision in York, but that more level 1 provision was needed for the 4 or 5 per cent. of students who are not in education, employment or training. Archbishop's sixth form is making a real contribution in that field, focusing on the needs of the NEET group and of young people aged 16 to 18 who have disabilities.
	However, there are other schools—good schools—in York seeking sixth forms. If they were all to take individual decisions, we could end up with poorer 16-to-19 provision overall. There is a tension between school choice on the one hand and the LEA's commissioning role on the other. I believe that a different balance is needed on who can take a decision. The Government's decision to give LEAs responsibility for further education and schools will help a new balance to be struck.
	It is important for the Government and LEAs to recognise that learner choice is not the same as school choice. We need learner-centred provision so that young people in York and the surrounding area can choose between school or sixth-form college and between a wide range of subjects—not just A-levels, but vocational provision.
	I also want to say a word or two about the discrepancy in funding between school sixth forms and further education. School sixth forms receive a premium of about 5.6 per cent. If York college received the same funding as school sixth forms, it would get about £900,000 more per year. Quite quickly, as I have been raising the matter for several years, I would like to see that gap being closed. It is more likely that that will be achieved now that LEAs have responsibility for further education as well as schools.
	I congratulate the Government on their capital funding for schools and for colleges. In 1996-97, schools in York received capital funding of less than £1 million a year. In the 12 years since then, they have received, on average each year, more than £10 million—a tenfold increase for York's schools. As I said, we have a brand new York college, built at a cost of £65 million, more than £20 million of which came in the form of Government grant.
	Once again, however, there is a gap between the capital regime for further education and that for school sixth forms, which receive 100 per cent. capital funding whereas further education does not. In order to build a new college building, York college had to borrow some £4.5 million on its own account, and a proportion of its general income is used to pay back that loan. Schools do not pay VAT on services and equipment, but colleges do. Although both school and college-goers receive the education maintenance allowance, which is an important Labour innovation because it makes it possible for people from low-income families to continue in education after 16, in schools young people from low-income families also receive the benefit of free school meals, which are not available in FE. If one takes all the funding differences together, the gap is not 5.6 per cent., which is what the Government acknowledge, but rather more—possibly as much as 15 per cent.
	Colleges admit a greater proportion of students from disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Some 29 per cent. of those in FE come from such neighbourhoods, compared with 19 per cent. of those in school sixth forms and, for comparative purposes, some 20 per cent. of those in universities. It is important that students from more disadvantaged neighbourhoods get the same quality and level of funding as those in schools, and LEAs must address that.
	I should say a word in response to what the Conservative spokesman said about the problem of overstretch in the Building Colleges for the Future budget. York is very fortunate to have its new college, and I want other people, such as those in Barnsley, to have that benefit, too. I have tabled an early-day motion expressing my concern about the cuts in Building Schools for the Future, and I urge hon. Members to sign it. It makes the case for increasing Government funding for FE capital projects. In an economic downturn, there is a strong case for investment in public infrastructure.
	I regret that the Conservative spokesman did not welcome the level of investment that the Government are putting into colleges—some £2.6 billion in the current spending period. I see that he is coming back into the Chamber, and I hope that he will commit to a fiscal stimulus package to counter the recession, including further investment in further education.

David Anderson: It is possible that I am the only Member present who served a full apprenticeship, although I stand to be corrected on that. When I served an apprenticeship as a mechanic, there was respect for the traditions of people who had served apprenticeships for many years. We felt, as apprentices and as craftsmen, that we were part of a culture in which what was learnt was passed on, and it was part and parcel of the pride that we took in doing the job that young people were introduced to it. It was heartening for me to become a time-served craftsman and work with young people in learning skills. However, it was disheartening for me to be part of a generation that saw the last of the apprenticeships in the industry in which I worked, the coal industry.
	It was directly owing to the policy of the Conservative party that we saw a decline in apprenticeships. It made policy decisions that largely destroyed the coal industry, decimated the railway industry, did away with the shipyards, cut back the steelworks and privatised British Gas, the electricity boards, the water boards and BT. All those were national companies with major training schemes, which employed many, many young people. What happened to young people in my village was that, instead of working with people like me—as apprenticeship mechanics, electricians or welders—they ended up as apprentice burglars and apprentice drug-takers, and became very good at taking cars without the owners' consent and taking radios from cars. That is not much to pass on to the next generation.
	In the days when I trained with the National Coal Board, everyone had some form of education, right up to degree level. People were not just given vocational training; they were taught how to stay alive underground and, importantly, how to keep their fellow workers alive. A huge vacuum was created at the end of the 1980s and during the 1990s, but I am thankful that my party's Government have begun to fill it. It is true that things are not perfect, but we have, without a doubt, modernised and restructured apprenticeships in a way that addresses the challenges of the 21st century. Those challenges are, and will continue to be, different from the challenges that I faced when I became an apprentice. The fact remains that the Government have invested additional money this year. They have agreed to provide a further £140 million, which will fund 35,000 apprenticeships. That is good for the public, and for the people for whom the apprentices are working. In 1997 there were only 65,000 apprenticeships in the country; today there are a quarter of a million, and completion rates are at an all-time high. That is something we can be very proud of.
	During the Secretary of State's speech, I raised the subject of union learning reps, which is never mentioned by the Conservative party. That may appear unsurprising, given its attitude to trade unions. There are 22,000 accredited union learning reps out there working with people. I was involved, with the National Union of Public Employees, in a scheme called Return to Learn, which helped people many of whom had no literacy or numeracy skills, and experienced great problems even in reading or writing. For the first time since leaving school, in many cases as young as 15, people were told "We value you. You may only be doing menial, manual work in society's eyes, but your contribution is important, and because of that we want you to become re-engaged in the world of education." Such schemes have been one of the keystones of workplace learning in this country. Last year, a quarter of a million people were given access to learning at work through union learning reps.

Adam Holloway: The importance of this debate is underlined by the OECD's economic outlook; it says that unemployment in our country could rise to 10 per cent., and it said in November that it could rise faster than in any other G7 country. Accurate and promptly published analysis of unemployment trends is important for the providers of training and further education, particularly in a recession, which is also an opportunity for reskilling. In terms of the data available to inform training providers, the jobseeker figures provided by Jobcentre Plus and the Office for National Statistics seem to vary by between 10 per cent. and 15 per cent. That is concerning in itself, but when we add in the number of those who are economically inactive but who want a job, the unemployment figure in Gravesham is almost trebled.
	I wish to highlight a group of motivated adults who could not read or write but were turned away by their college of further education. They had all taken the difficult step of deciding to learn to read and write and had filled in all the forms. Some of them were motivated to do so because they wanted to start to do homework with their children, some because they wanted to expand their businesses, while others just wanted to achieve their potential. They went to their local FE college and, to its credit, they found a great class that they enjoyed, but there was a problem: the Government's policy to phase out funding on equivalent or lower qualifications. They had taken a huge step in admitting that they could not read or write, and had grasped the basics, but they wanted to do more advanced things such as write job application letters. That was deemed to be a bit too advanced to be funded, however. Indeed, the policy required members of the group to learn individually using a specially designed computer programme. The group set itself up in a local church hall, and a saint-like teacher from the local college agreed to work on a much lower rate of pay. Some of the adult learners valued what they were learning so much that they funded the course from their benefit payments. I am delighted that this community group was able to fund and deliver that learning and development, and such community-organised solutions are always refreshing, but do we want motivated people to be turned away from training?
	Another group I wish to highlight is those who are already skilled but who want to retrain for work in sectors that are offering jobs. Let me offer the examples from Gravesham of a construction worker who had a back injury and a bus driver who had suffered a stroke, which prevented them from performing manual work and driving. Both men enjoyed computing and wanted to be retrained in that field, where one could expect a motivated and qualified person to find a job. The man with the stroke was expected to recover fully over about three years and, rather than sit around on disability benefits during that period, he wanted to spend the time retraining. He faced some hurdles, however. Under the current rules, jobseekers can wait up to 18 months before they are able to take a full-time training course while claiming benefits. Nevertheless, jobcentres can help to arrange shorter training courses sooner than that. The problem is that the choice is fairly limited unless one wants training in basic English or maths, which many newly unemployed people do not need.
	I can also offer the example of a man who was a service manager in a car dealership, which is not a good organisation to be employed in right now. He therefore wants to reskill as a locksmith as he has identified a gap in the market, but he is finding it very difficult to get help to retrain to do that.
	Another problem is that any additional training can be limited to what are described as "growth areas". I identified Gravesham's only growth area when making representations following a visit to 50 employees who had worked for the local branch of Woolworths. They were mainly women in their mid-40s and 50s, and a fair number of them had left school without qualifications, and had gone to work for Woolworths after raising a family. I made inquiries on their behalf at our jobcentre to determine what training they would receive, and was told that the only identified growth area was the care sector. The care sector offer good careers in Gravesham, of course, but what struck me was the idea that that was the only available option, because not everybody is suited to working in the care sector.
	Training opportunities for people should be not only rational, but flexible; they should not simply be linked to the main growth areas. We must keep the recently unemployed keen, motivated and focused and then get them back into work. The Government must do more to distinguish between the recently unemployed and the long-term unemployed. Of course all unemployed people should remain on our radar, but we must avoid the recently, first-time unemployed joining the long-term unemployed—their needs are not very subtly different. The newly unemployed need rapid training to avoid their joining the benefits-cycle club.
	In conclusion, we need more accurate data; a streamlined funding model for further education that is flexible to the needs of the local community and individuals; and rapid retraining, specifically of the recently unemployed. Finally, I would be grateful if the Minister could update me on the position of the building works at North West Kent college in Gravesend.

Hugh Bayley: Even though the hon. Gentleman and I disagree on whether LEAs should take responsibility for the funding of FE colleges, does he agree that there should be a level playing field in terms of funding—the same amount per pupil unit for sixth-formers in schools and colleges?

David Evennett: My hon. Friend the Member for Havant has already answered that by saying that we are looking at things very sympathetically. We must move on, because the time available to us is very short.  [Interruption.] The hon. Member for West Ham, who is a Parliamentary Private Secretary, seems to want to make a contribution—she has made more of a contribution from a sedentary position than many others.
	In the short time available I wish to concentrate on two things: NEETs; and the college capital programme. Unemployment is a real tragedy and the failure of young people to be in training, education or employment is a real concern. This current recession is hitting the younger people in our community even harder. The level of youth unemployment is rising and we are very concerned that it will continue to rise, with the result that there will be more people in this situation. A record number of people are not in any form of education, employment or training, as shown in the official figures. That is a tragedy for individuals, for local communities and for our country's future, thus it is so important that we look constructively at dealing with the situation.
	In the past, the UK's position on youth unemployment was a lot better than the OECD average, but I regret to say that it is deteriorating. We have heard in speeches today how much more it will deteriorate—even by the Government's own admission—in the forthcoming future. This is a disaster and it is an indictment of what the Government have failed to do in their term in office.
	The Prime Minister, long before entering No. 10, stated that youth unemployment would be one of his priorities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Havant said, this Government always have good intentions and they are good on rhetoric, but the reality is always something quite different. That is terribly disappointing. The Association of Colleges says that existing problems include a funding system that is "too slow", rules that restrict the movement of "money between funding pots" and an obsession with
	"full level qualifications that are not appropriate in the current economic situation."
	It has also said that
	"there is a major disincentive for Colleges to deliver flexible packages of training which fall outside the rules."
	Restrictions on other training providers are also causing problems. A number of training providers with tried-and-tested ways of helping young people engage with learning and the labour market have found that they are ineligible for public funding because they do not tick the right boxes. In some instances, they have had to halt all provision as a result. Training providers face a difficult and uncertain future due to constant internal reorganisation at the LSC and the Government's education Bill, which is going through Parliament at the moment and will create more new quangos, more bureaucracy and more ineffective delivery of facilities for training and opportunities for our young people.
	The recession will result in there not being enough jobs for people to go to for people leaving school, colleges and universities. We need to support those people along with the recently unemployed, and to give them advice, perhaps access to further training and opportunities for employment and new careers so that they are prevented from becoming long-term claimants. The Conservatives are very concerned about how we can help young people coming out of colleges and universities to get into jobs.
	Britain, regrettably, starts from a weak skills base. We hear too often how many people—5 million or whatever—are classed as functionally illiterate, and millions more struggle with basic literacy and numeracy. The Secretary of State scratches his head, and he might well do so, because such problems are real in today's society.  [ Interruption. ] He can make comments from a sedentary position, but people matter and there is no point in being flippant about these situations.
	We are looking to train more people. We heard that there has been a cut in adult learning places. My hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) intervened and made it quite clear that it is often vital for many people to go to adult education and get some qualifications before they can go on to get further qualifications. Women returners, in particular, as well as other people, need that opportunity and focus to go into education again. The Government have cut those opportunities and we have seen the number of places dramatically reduce in the past few years.

Si�n Simon: About his non-leg waxing and tonsorial treatments at his local FE college. Amusing though that was, he went on to make the point, My local FE college even does accountancy. That was a good point, well made. People can do more at an FE college now than was traditionally the case. I recently went to Matthew Boulton college in Birmingham city centre. It is a fantastic college that was built four years ago but is still a state-of-the-art beacon of what can be doneand of what we have done all over this country, as we have built new FE colleges to allow vocational learners to do all kinds of training. At Matthew Boulton, students can not only do accountancy but dentistry, too. There are mini operating theatres and a state-of-the-art broadband wireless fitting thing on which all the Sky installation engineers in the country are trained.
	That is what one can do in an FE college these days, and that is what people are doing, up and down the land, in the colleges that we have built and that we are continuing to build. However, having said that, there has been a serious problem in the future funding for the FE colleges that we plan to build. The hon. Member for Bristol, West began the debate on that subject by talking about the numbers of colleges involved in the current difficulties. It was also mentioned by the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) and a couple of other Members, and I shall come back to it.
	Before I mention the capital, which is the next issue that I shall deal with, I want to mention the thrust of the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson). He spoke with great passion, and from experience, about the union learning fund, its representatives, what they do and achieve, and how important they are. The Secretary of State mentioned them in his opening speech, and said that he had recently been to a union learning facility in his constituency. A week or two before I was appointed to my current job, I visited a union learning facility in my constituency.
	It is notable that the shadow Secretary of State did not mention union learning in his speech, and his party's lengthy documents never mention it. He intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon to say that he had recently had a meeting with the Trades Union Congress, at which his attitude had been sympathetic. I have to say that to those of us on the Labour Benches it seemed more pathetic than sympathetic that he would not guarantee the 21.5 million that we invest in that learning. There was even a parliamentary question tabled by an hon. Member from his party about unionlearn, the thrust of which was, Why are we spending public money funding people to learn about how to be trade unionists? As hon. Members will know, that is not what unionlearn is about. It is about union representatives in the workplace signposting and directing into learning workers who otherwise would not get there. It is a great programme, and my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon does great work by bringing it up.
	I have a feeling that in the time available to me, I might not get very much further than the subject of capital. The hon. Member for Bristol, West, talked about the number of colleges affected by the current problem. There are 144 colleges directly affected; 79 have already received approval in principle, and a further 65 have submitted their applications in principle but have not yet received approval. As I have said on many occasions in this House and elsewhere, and to many college principals whom I have met, many other colleges will have invested time, money in some cases, and certainly energy and commitment in drawing up putative plans for future investment, but will not yet have submitted their papers. We are, and have always been, consciousI have said this many times in the Housethat in addition to the 144 colleges mentioned, another subset of colleges is affected in a real but lesser way. The 144 colleges mentioned are those that are directly involved in the current scheme.

Andrew Lansley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who understands these matters extremely well. He is right about that, but let me anticipate what I was in any case going to say. Dr. Colin-Thom points out how the SHA and the PCT failed to meet their responsibilities, saying that the
	PCTs past and present and SHAs past and present do not appear to have taken notice of signs that were present in the survey data and in complaints that indicated poor patient care.
	Evidence of poor care has emerged that was not collated or challenged by the PCTs or SHAs at the time.
	We know from the Healthcare Commission's report that clinical governance issues that were raised in 2002, and on which its predecessor organisations commented adversely, were exactly the same in 2008. Up until the trust became a foundation trust, the SHAs were responsible for the scrutiny of its performance, and they, in particular, clearly failed to address themselves to the quality of care that the trust providedto the point at which, in March 2008, when the SHA board received the University of Birmingham's report on data, it said that
	there appeared to be nothing to indicate that anything out of the ordinary was taking place on mortality.
	There was a woeful failure on the part of the SHA and the PCT. Notwithstanding the fact that Dr. Colin-Thom makes it clear that there was such a failure, there is no indication in his review of who was responsible. On the issue of who was responsible, we are talking about David Nicholson, for about a year, who is now chief executive of the NHS, and Cynthia Bowers, subsequently, who is now chief executive of the Care Quality Commission. Standing at the Dispatch Box, I do not know whether I can say that they were directlypersonallyresponsible for those failings in a way that should be substantively criticised; I do know, however, that the motion is not about criticising any individual, but about establishing a public inquiry. However, I do not want anyone to think that, by calling for an inquiry, we have neglected the fact that the proper purpose of such a public inquiry is to find out whether two of the most senior people in the NHS, with responsibility for its services, have shown that they are credible or capable of such responsibility.

Andrew Lansley: Yes, it does. It may be excessive to expect that even a public inquiry would be able to identify, in all cases, where and to what extent that had happened. However, if a review of case notes gives rise to serious concerns about a significant number of cases, at least a public inquiry would provide a mechanism for those to be considered in the round in terms of what that tells us about the clinical governance that was being undertaken and how it may need to be reformed in future.
	I want to make a specific point about what has not been achieved by these reviews. For several years, the Government have had the National Patient Safety Agency. One of its principal tasks involves the national reporting and learning system, which should in itself give rise to alerts about the compromise of patient care and errors and inefficiencies. I have failed to see any evidence anywhere in the reviews that the National Patient Safety Agency exists, let alone that it has done anything. If a public inquiry were to look into failings of policy, and needs for the future, that would clearly be one of them.
	I hope that, in the course of the past few minutes, I have made it clear that the questions about why Stafford hospital failed its patients in emergency services and admissions, as identified in the Healthcare Commission report, have not been answered, and why a public inquiry is therefore needed. The reports thus far have not given the public in Staffordshire a voice, and they have not provided a public opportunity, with protection, for evidence to be taken. The reports were not independent, and they have failed to investigate the direct role of the Department of Health and its policies. Until recently, both the authors were civil servants in the Department of Health: they are not independent, and we should not see them as such. Neither report contained critical scrutiny of the impact of targets. There was no critical examination of the role of the chief executives of the strategic health authorities over the period in question. There was no discussion of the roles of the national reporting and learning system or of the National Patient Safety Agency. There was no discussion of how the complaints processes have worked or how patient engagement has worked, and no substantive proposals about how they can be reformed in future, as they clearly must be. Instead of robust criticism, all we have is a bureaucratic process. Dr. Colin-Thom's report, in particular, suggests that the things that the Government were already planning to do, such as practice-based commissioning, world-class commissioning and LINks, will somehow solve everything. There is no evidence that that will happenfar from it. Indeed, some initiatives, such as practice-based commissioning and LINks, are stalling rather than making the progress that they should.
	Because of all that, the reports do not shed light on why those in the hospital and elsewhere failed to stop the tragic events that have killed, or caused avoidable deaths among perhaps hundreds of patients, with all the distress that that has meant for their families. I again pay tribute to Julie Bailey and all her colleagues at the Cure the NHS campaign, who persisted when the situation was very difficult and it took courage to do so in the face of a bureaucracy that was determined that they would not expose what was happening at Stafford hospital. They want an inquiry now, and say that only when we know why and how this happened will the commitment to say Never again truly be credible. Ministers have been to see them and have promised to think again, but I do not see the evidence that they have done so. It is therefore incumbent on Parliament to require them to think again, and I commend the motion to the House.

Ben Bradshaw: I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from House to the end of the Question and add:
	notes the independent report by the Healthcare Commission which identified severe failings at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust and the follow-up reports by the National Clinical Director for Emergency Care and the National Clinical Director for Primary Care which state that Stafford Hospital's accident and emergency department is now safe but that further improvements must be made at the Trust and lessons learnt by the whole NHS; further notes that the hospital has offered independent reviews of clinical records to all concerned; agrees that at the present time it would not be appropriate to establish an independent public inquiry; further agrees that management and staff at the hospital must remain focused on delivering high quality patient care; and further agrees that an independent public inquiry could add undue delay to implementing the recommendations of the above reports and therefore to the hospital delivering high quality and safe services for the local community .
	I am grateful for the shadow Health Secretary's understanding of the fact that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State cannot be with us this evening because of the assembly of the World Health Organisation.
	On 17 March 2009, the Healthcare Commission, then the independent health regulator, published its report into the failings in emergency care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust between 2005 and mid-2008. It was a catalogue of appalling management and failures at every level, for which the Secretary of State apologised unreservedly on behalf of the Government and the NHS in his statement to the House the next day.
	The Government immediately announced a range of measures, including two swift reviews of the circumstances at Stafford hospital, to be led by Professor Sir George Alberti, the national clinical director for emergency care, and Dr. David Colin-Thom, the national clinical director for primary care. Professor Alberti looked into the hospital's current procedures for emergency admissions and treatment, its progress against the recommendations in the Healthcare Commission's report, while Dr. Colin-Thom looked into the circumstances surrounding the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust prior to the Healthcare Commission's investigation to learn lessons about how the primary care trust and strategic health authority, within the commissioning and performance management systems that they operated, had failed to expose what was happening at the hospital. Copies of those reports were placed in the Library on 30 April, as was the Government's response.
	I heard what the hon. Gentleman said about the lack of an oral statement. He will know that providing an oral statement is not in the gift of an individual Secretary of State. The Secretary of State has gone out of his way to keep the House informed, but it is up to the business managers. The hon. Gentleman may also recall that on that day Members were discussing MPs' expenses at some length. I personally would have very much welcomed the opportunity for an oral statement to be made, but it was not agreed to by the business managers.

Ben Bradshaw: As my hon. Friend knows from the many discussions that the Secretary of State and I have held with him, we are always open and willing to discuss any ideas that he has, but I shall address the specific matter of a public inquiry at some length later.
	The Government accepted all the recommendations of both reports and have begun to implement them in full. In summary, the reports found that, first, significant improvements had already been made at Stafford hospital. Services in accident and emergency were now safe, but there was an urgent need to make further improvements to other services and to rebuild local confidence in the trust. Secondly, in the past, patients' views were not taken seriously enough and were too easily dismissed. Thirdly, there was a lamentable failure of clinical leadership in the trust and the wider health community. Fourthly, the commissioners of local health services were not sufficiently aware of the poor-quality care in the hospital or active in addressing it. Fifthly, all parts of the system should have worked together better in the interests of patients.
	Some have attempted to suggest that what happened at Stafford hospital is typical of the NHS as a whole, or was a result of targets or some other national policy. It is important to recognise, not least because of the fantastic job that NHS staff do in hospitals throughout the country, that the Healthcare Commission and the two subsequent reports found that what happened at Stafford hospital was the result of catastrophic local failure. Every NHS nurse, doctor and manager in the country to whom I have spoken is as horrified by events there as we all are.
	The onus must, therefore, be, first and foremost, on Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, together with its local partners and South Staffordshire primary care trust, to address the recommendations relevant to them in the reports, make further improvements in the quality of care and rebuild local confidence.

Ben Bradshaw: As I hope the Secretary of State and I have made clear, we are always open to representations. We have listened carefully to those that have already been made, both by hon. Members from all parts of the House and Julie Bailey, whom I join the Opposition spokesman in paying tribute to. However, so far we remain unconvinced, and that is as far as I can go.
	In a letter to my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) from Sir Ian Kennedy, the outgoing chairman of the Healthcare Commission who chaired the Bristol babies inquiry, Sir Ian said that he did not think that a public inquiry would be justified in this case. However, as we have repeatedly made clear to hon. Members and to the local patients organisations and others, if there are significant issues or lines of inquiry that they do not think have been addressed, either by the Healthcare Commission report or by the subsequent reviews, the Secretary of State will be only too happy to consider them.

Ben Bradshaw: I am sure that the Secretary of State will want to consider that question, but given that he commissioned that workjust as he did all the other reports, all of which have been put in the public domainI should be very surprised if he did not agree. However, we need to see the report first.
	The Healthcare Commission's report laid bare appalling failure at Mid Staffordshire. The two subsequent reports made further and far-reaching recommendations, which are being implemented locally and nationally, in order to ensure what every hon. Member will be satisfied that such terrible failure can never be allowed to happen again.

Norman Lamb: I understand that concern, and all hon. Members on both sides of the House who feel strongly about this should combine together to put the maximum pressure on the Government, not only in tonight's vote but subsequently, to ensure that the issue does not just go away. There is always a danger, as events move on, that these issues can slip down the agenda, but we must not let that happen in this case.

Norman Lamb: I am grateful to the Minister for that clarification.
	The second reason there should be a public inquiry is the role of the clinicians in the hospital. Many people have expressed their concern that, despite the awful things going on therethe dreadful care to which the former chair of the Healthcare Commission referredit appears that no clinician saw fit to report their concerns to senior management or elsewhere, with the possible exception of one nurse, about whom we heard last weekend. It could be argued that they felt prevented from doing so by the bullying culture in the organisation. However, they have a professional clinical duty to their patients, and, irrespective of the extent to which the unit was understaffed, if they saw that there was inadequate care, it was their duty to report their concerns and to get something done about it. That did not happen, and that in itself is a scandal that should be investigated by way of a public inquiry. It is not being looked at in any other way. None of the reports that the Secretary of State has commissioned has looked at that issue. As things stand, those clinicians who participated in the care that has been so heavily criticised are presumably continuing to work in the NHS. Should we not be concerned about that? That issue is not being addressed, and it ought to be.
	The other issue relating to clinicians is the culture of bullying that appears to exist.  The Sunday Telegraph this weekend reported concerns raised by a nurse who had previously worked in the A and E department at the hospital. She raised those concerns in November 2007, yet nothing appears to have been done. She referred to racist abuse, and to the fact that nurses were
	routinely ordered to lie about how long patients had been waiting.
	She also reported:
	Junior doctors were bullied into discharging patients before they had been properly examined in order to meet targets.

David Kidney: As a Labour Member of Parliament I am committed to the NHS, and as Stafford's Member of Parliament I am committed to a hospital in Stafford, so it broke my heart to read in the Healthcare Commission's report that patients had been severely, appallingly let down by the NHS and the local hospital.
	I support a full, independent public inquiry into every aspect of what went wrong, why, and how it can be put right for the future. I shall vote for an inquiry tonight. Yes, an inquiry will take some time to complete its investigations and deliberations and produce a report, and, yes, it can be distracting for people who have a job to do at the hospital while the investigations are ongoing. However, the work has to be done. One thing we can usefully do is talk about the form and terms of reference of the inquiry. If the Government will not give way on this today, one way in which we can continue the pressure is to start to get ready for an inquiry.
	I wish to say a word about my hospitalif I may call it thatand what my public and my patients want today. An inquiry will take some time, but there are things that need urgent attention at Stafford hospital, and I do not want us to lose sight of that urgency because we are also talking about a public inquiry. For example, the Healthcare Commission's report told us about the severe understaffing on wards and the urgent need for more staff. It told us about missing medical equipment and the urgent need for it to be provided. Six weeks later, Professor Alberti produced his report and said that there were staffing shortages and that more staff urgently needed to be appointed. He said that there was an urgent need to provide some medical equipment that was still missing. Six weeks on, the urgency had not been accepted and implemented. We must not overlook the fact that those things are still urgent today.
	I remind the House that the Healthcare Commission produced damning evidence about three aspects of the hospital: accident and emergency, emergency care and some nursing care. However, in the same report it mentioned positive things about the hospital. There were no concerns about elective care, and during the three-year period investigated there was a decline in the number of complaints about out-patient care. There was praise for the acute coronary care unit and the critical care unit. It is important to retain a sense of balance. People going into that hospital had good experiences in some parts of it at some times, just as others had bad, sometimes appallingly bad or fatal experiences. I ask the House to bear that in mind.
	When Professor Alberti went in after the Healthcare Commission, he was able to talk about improvements in A and E and say that there had been some improvements in emergency care, although not enough. He mapped the way to continuing that improvement. He said that even when he was there, there were still instances of poor nursing care that needed addressing. He made a warts-and-all assessment, which showed that we still need urgent attention given to some things. It is very important to remember that.
	Imagine the effects of working at that hospital today, given all the bad publicity that has appeared nationally, and the likelihood that people will complain about anything for fear it will not be spotted if a complaint is not made about it. Imagine every story that someone chooses to publicise becoming a headline in the local newspaper. Morale is very low at the hospital. There are fears that even now, as it recruits extra staff, some people will not want to work there because they have seen the publicity.
	Into that worrying situation I stepped, with four simple proposals. I wrote to my constituents asking whether they agreed with them. I proposed that those responsible for the management of the hospital on whose failings the Healthcare Commission reported should be replaced, that staffing levels should be corrected and retained, that there should be stronger powers for patients and the public, and that there should be an independent inquiry. So far more than 3,500 constituents have responded, and more than 90 per cent. of them agree with my proposals. I emphasise to the Minister that 3,500 people in the Stafford constituency think that there should be an independent inquiry.
	Let me say something about the rebuilding of the trust board. We heard that the chair had resigned just before the publication of the Healthcare Commission's report. I shall not elaborate on what was said by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) about the treatment of the chief executive. Let me merely say how angry local people are about the fact that step down did not mean resign at the outset, the fact that he received pay while suspended, and the fact that he is now apparently being allowed to resign with no consequences while still receiving that pay. People are very, very angry about that.
	We are recruiting a new chair, a new chief executive and new non-executive directors, and there will be a new board. At present, however, the trust faces the greatest challenges. An interim chair with another job in Sheffield and an interim executive with another job in Chesterfield are managing and leading the hospital. It is still a worrying time, and I ask for Members' support for the management and staff of the hospital as they try to do all the things that need to be done in the present circumstances.
	It is true that the board needs to move from a closed to an open culture, but it has reverted to holding its meetings in public, and at the first of those meetings it reaffirmed its policy on whistleblowing. I showed the whisteblowing policy to Public Concern at Work, which made constructive suggestions for its improvement. The trust has agreed to write to every employee about the policy in this month's pay packet, confirming that people are free to make their concerns known if they have them. Those are all valuable developments.
	It should also be remembered that the board is yet still to present its action plan in response to the report. It is now calling the plan its transformation programme, and I understand that it was agreed with Monitor at the end of last week. There have been some public presentationsfor instance, to the overview and scrutiny committee, which has been dealing with the planbut if we seriously believe that the public and patients should be involved in the trust in the future, we must accept that the plan will require full public consultation and approval. I am sure we will make certain that that happens.
	I should like to say much more about staffing levels, but we are short of time. Although there is no agreed level for wards in this countryor internationallythe Royal College of Nursing has valuable policy guidance, which reminds us that a number of factors must be taken into account. In my view, the dependency levels of patients are an especially important factor; but so, of course, are nursing experience, a skills mix, a settled staff, minimum sickness and absenteeism and less reliance on agency cover, and all those factors affected hospital staff during the time we are discussing.
	I agree that the handling of complaints was atrocious, and that we must adopt an open and learning culture. That will require constant dialogue between patients, their relatives, the public, and those who work at the hospital. It should not be a big thing to say that something is wrong at the hospital: people should be able to accept that and act on it. I have told Ministers before today that the LINk in Staffordshire is particularly poorly developed. We need to be helped to make it the best of its kind, not one of the weaker of its kind.
	Let me now deal with the arguments for an inquiry. We do need an inquiry. The trust pulled the wool over the eyes of the Healthcare Commission for three years. In each of those three years, the commission produced improving assessments of a trust that it later said was so bad. Is the problem self-assessment? Does it constitute a failing of the commission itself that it received more complaints about this trust, in relation to its size, than about any other, and that it produced action plans in response to stage 2 complaints but did not pursue them to establish whether they were implemented? The chairman of that body said there was no need for a public inquiry, but one of the things such an inquiry would look into is the performance of his organisation.
	There should be an investigation. The trust pulled the wool over the eyes of Monitor, as we have heard. The big black hole was about clinical care, where Ministers now accept there was a lacuna, but that has now been put right. Even in terms of Monitor's expert area of governance, management and leadership, the Healthcare Commission report tears the trust apart for secrecy, for as little as possible being reported to the board, and for as little as possible of the board's conduct being made public. Those issues should be investigated.
	For me, the biggest issue is the independence of the case reviews for the relatives of deceased patients, because the trust has organised those reviewsalbeit while bringing in outside clinicians who are independent of it. How can people feel trust in that system? Such reviews should be anchored in a public inquiry; and if there is a role to be considered for the coroner, that needs to be looked into as well.
	All I want to say in conclusion is that 3,500 of my constituents have said there should be an inquiry, and the local councilsStafford borough and Cannock Chase districthave resolved that there should an inquiry as well. The Patients Association has a national petition that people are signing, and the RCN supports this, and P.A.C.E. 2000, an organisation of elderly people in my constituency, also thinks there should be an inquiry. That is a lot of people, and the Minister should listen to them.

William Cash: This is a debate about freedom of information. It is a tale of cover-ups by two closed cultures: a cover-up by the hospital and its superior organisations, and a cover-up by the Government and their subordinate public organisations. That has resulted in a pincer movement of both death and despair. My constituents and the people representing the interests of the victims and the bereaved demand justice, and they will get justice only if they have a proper inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 because that will call for evidence on oath, and have compulsion of witnesses and proper legal protection for whistleblowers, which is not available under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 as it is bypassed. I am saying not that the 1998 Act is bad in itself, but that it does not operate when certain people get to work on it. There are also good people at the hospital who need to be exonerated, and a public inquiry would provide for that.
	There is now to be a Select Committee inquiry. That will give us the opportunity to present measured evidence, which we cannot do in 10 minutes tonight. I also ask my party's shadow Secretary of State to assure us that we would be able to have a public inquiry if and when we get into government next year, because that would be a good opportunity. I strongly suggest that the credibility of the Government is at stakeand I must say that I dismiss with contempt the Minister's recent trivial speech. Already, two governors have called for a public inquiry of the kind that is required and, as the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) has said, Stafford borough council was unanimous in its demand for one.
	I would like to quote from a statement from one of the nurses at this hospital. I want to read it out because it is very important. X and Y are my terms for two nurses:
	I spoke to X. I explained to her the situation and asked her to relay this information to Y. Whilst she did this she kept me on the phone. I heard her tell Y that I had discovered that several patients had breached. I then heard Y tell X to tell me to lie. X came back on to the phone and told me that Y's advice to me was to lie. I told her I was not happy to do this and explained that I had informed the clinical site manager of the breaches.
	She went on to make another statement, again at a critical time. She said:
	I have become increasingly frightened in my place of work,
	and am
	feeling more and more threatened.
	She quotes one of the nurses saying that
	you want to watch being in with her, a lot of people are getting fed up with her and she is going to get what's coming to her. You want to watch your back and be careful or you'll go down with her!
	She also refers to the cumulative effect and says that
	the net result has led me to feel quite terrified given the present context.
	Then she talks about lying about the breach time and an occasion about which she said:
	This incident led me to feel profoundly shocked that a senior colleague could firstly blatantly lie about a patient's breach time, and secondly submit documentation, altered by her, in my name thereby knowingly leaving me open to disciplinary action.
	The statement then contains reference to another patient and quotes that involve some effings here and there. Then she says in respect of a particular patient
	I have heard
	a nurse
	state that she was going to get rid of him. Most recently following his hospital admission after taking an overdose I was present when she said 'He should have taken a few more pills and done the job properly.'
	The hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who spoke for the Liberal Democrats, mentioned racism. The following quotes are mentioned in the statement:
	'what have you got in that ruck-sack Doctor, is it a bomb?'...'Him with the turban' or 'Her with the yashmak.'...'Him over thereOsama's mate'.
	Things continue in the same manner. These allegations clearly have to be properly examined.
	I am not using the names of the people involved, for reasons that I shall come to in a minute. The Minister will not deny that he has said to me that if I have the evidencefor which people were shrieking when I raised the matter when objecting to our being prevented from having an oral statementWhy don't you anonymise it?. I shall tell both him and the House why: when I did anonymise it, in a letter to the Secretary of State relating to a hospital nearby, the next thing I knew, after a considerable pause, was that the consultant in question had been suspended. Only last week, he was summoned for a Kafkaesque trial as if he needed to have a psychiatric assessment. I can tell the House that that consultant and the patient in question are constituents of mine and that consultant had saved the child's life. I am so furious that I cannot speak about it. This is the way things are carrying on and we hear these platitudes about whistleblowers being protected under the legislation.
	The marvellous Public Concern at Work charity has made its criticisms, as the hon. Member for Stafford knows because we have been given the same material. The fact is that the whistleblowing policy being conducted in this particular hospital has to be reformed along the lines that we will explain later in the Select Committeeunfortunately, I have not time to go into this tonight.
	I am holding a paper written by another consultant, who was suspended at one and a half hours' notice because he had had the temerity to complain about antibiotic policyhe had been with the hospital for many years. I must be careful, because I do not want to expose others to the kind of treatment that the consultant to whom I have referred has received. He was suspended with after such a short a notice period on the issue of antibiotic policy and the non-availability of nurses on consultant ward rounds. This is a national disgrace and the legislation does not protect such people properly. The reality is that the allegations that I am making need to be properly examined by the Select Committee, when we have more time to do the job.
	I move on to the question of the manner in which the Government have covered up. I mentioned, much to the Minister's hilarity, which I thought pathetic, that Ian Kennedyhe wrote the foreword to the Bristol inquirysubsequently became chairman of the Healthcare Commission, produced the Stafford report and came up with a different version about the value of public inquiries. That was the point I was making. Ian Kennedy had said:
	A Public Inquiry cannot turn back the clock. It can, however, offer an opportunity to let all those touched by the events, in our case Bristol, be heard and to listen to others.
	He had gone on to talk about the
	public venting of anger, distress and frustration; it provides a public stage on which this can take place.
	I say again that if it is good enough for Bristol, it is good enough for us. He has obviously changed his mind since he became chairman of the Healthcare Commission, and I would like to get all that on the record.

Andrew Lansley: Does my hon. Friend agree that Ian Kennedyunderstandably, in the case of Staffordwas defending the Healthcare Commission, not least because when the Healthcare Commission undertook an investigation it would like not to feel that a precedent had been set that meant that it could be second guessed by a call for a public inquiry? Does my hon. Friend accept that I do not see this necessarily as setting a precedent? We did not ask for an inquiry after Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells, nor would we set out to do so in other cases. The evidence in this case seems to point to such a wide range of unresolved issues that it demands that we go down that path.

Michael Fabricant: The hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), whom it is my privilege to follow, spoke about the criteria that the Government believe in for a public inquiry. One of the criteria he mentioned was that of systemic failure. The problem that faces us in Staffordshire is one of systemic failure, but it is systemic failure that exists in other hospitals too.
	Before I go any further, I echo the opening words of my friend the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) by saying that, as a Conservative MP, I support the national health service, and as a Conservative MP, I support the workers in the NHS, particularly the workers in Stafford hospital, who at present work under such difficult conditions and who, I am sure, will look at the contents of this debate.
	I said that there have been systemic failures. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), the shadow Secretary of State for Health, mentioned the problem of whistleblowers. At a previous Health questions I said to the Secretary of State for Health that there was another example provided by two people who work in my constituencyI did not give their names because they are terrified that if their names were known, they would lose their job. They work at another hospital in the west midlands and showed me photographs that show disgraceful and unhygienic conditions in that hospital, but they would not leave the evidence with me, which left me in a paralysed situation because I could not do anything without the evidence.
	At the time, the Secretary of State told me that he was amazed that despite the protections that exist for whistleblowers, such huge fear still exists. Once again, the Secretary of State, who, I have no doubt, is a good man and has the best interests of the national health service at heart, said that he was amazed that whistleblowers did not speak out at Stafford hospital. As my constituents said to me, with nurses, doctors and even consultants being made redundant, would they be next? That is the issue that faces all those who work at Stafford hospital or other hospitals that may not have such acute problems but nevertheless require the shining light of publicity, or at least exposure.
	The report came out a few months ago and spoke of systemic weaknesses that have existed over the past three or four years. However, I spent a day with a paramedic crew from the old Staffordshire ambulance service, before it became a part of the West Midlands ambulance service. The crew said to me in 2000, Mr. Fabricant, if, God forbid, anything happens to you or your dearest, don't send them to Stafford. If you have to go to A and E, go to Burton hospital, because the survival rate is far greater there. I believe that the problem has existed for many years and is not just a recent occurrence.
	We have heard about the evidence from nurses. One nurse provided senior managers with details of her concerns in November 2007, but they were ignored. Her report talked about doctors and nurses being ordered to discharge people who were critically ill and, as we have already heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), to lie about how long others were waiting.
	The nurse documented cases, including that of an elderly patient who died the day after being sent home against her doctor's wishes. The lady concerned, who suffered from a bowel condition, had been taken to A and E suffering from acute abdominal pain, and anyone who has been to medical school for just a year and a half, let alone longer, will know that acute abdominal pain needs to be examined very seriously. It turned out that she had a perforated bowel, but she was sent home because that was the ethos at Stafford general hospital. The nurse said:
	I will never forgive the moment when the patient clasped my hand and said 'Am I going to die?' I can't say that she would definitely have been saved if she had been given the right care, but at the very least she should have been given some comfort and dignity.
	Despite the disadvantages that the Minister and the hon. Member for Cannock Chase have pointed out, I passionately believe that we still need a public inquiry, not to look to the past, but to provide lessons so that we can avoid the situation in the future at Stafford general hospital and stop the instances that I discussed a few moments ago which prevent whistleblowers in other hospitals making their views known. A public inquiry is important for our constituents, and I commend the hon. Member for Stafford for having the courage of his convictions and saying that he will vote tonight for an inquiry. His constituents, like mine and others in Staffordshire, all want to feel that justice will not only be done, but be seen to be done, and that there will be lessons learned and additional protections not only at Stafford general hospital but at hospitals in other parts of the country.
	The Under-Secretary of State for Health needs to answer some questions, and I should be grateful if she addressed them in her winding-up speech. First, does she think it right that the former chairman of the West Midlands strategic health authority, Cynthia Bower, is now in charge of the Care Quality Commission, the actual body that is responsible for monitoring the progress of Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust? Surely that is a conflict of interest. If there is not a public inquiry, what action can the Minister take to restore faith in Stafford general hospital among the residents not only of Stafford but of other parts of Staffordshire?
	How will we recruit nurses? We have already heard that there is a recruitment problem, because Stafford general is now branded a hospital that we would not wish it to be. One has only to read the comments in Staffordshire newspapers, such as the Stoke Sentinel, the  Staffordshire Newsletter, and the  Express and Star, to know the very real concerns that people continue to have about health care in the area.
	What progress is being made towards a coherent five-year plan for the trust, as recommended by the Alberti report? Still we hear that medical care on the wards is not as it should be. What progress is being made towards recruiting experienced surgeons for night shifts at the hospital? That is still a real problem for a hospital with an accident and emergency department. Finally, can the Minister give assurances that, at hospitals nationwide and not just at Stafford, patients are not simply being dumped outside accident and emergency wards so that the four-hour waiting-time targets can be hit?
	As I mentioned earlier in an intervention, such things happen not only at Stafford hospital, but here in WestminsterI have seen it for myself. Yes, targets can be good; I am not saying that we should have no targets at all. But not to accept that targets can endanger and distort clinical care is to live in a dangerous fantasy that puts the lives of all our constituents at risk.

Stephen O'Brien: We have had an important and comprehensive debate that has been characterised by cogent, balanced and sincere contributionsindeed, one could almost described them as pleasfrom all parts of the House, as befits such a gravely serious issue. It is an issue that must reach beyond party politics.
	We must remember that, at its heart, we are talking about the avoidable deaths of up to 1,200 people. Each of those deaths represents family and friends who are left with the heavy burden of grief, which is only intensified by the serious questions that need answering. Furthermore, those deaths can only be correlative to many hundreds more patients who did not receive the treatment that they deservedtreatment that they rightly expect of our NHS. Before going any farther, we must take a moment to remember all those who have suffered and who continue to suffer and grieve because of the failings at the Mid-Staffordshire trust. Equally, let us keep in mind the wonderful work of the individuals and teams working across the NHS who have been so badly let down by what has happened in Stafford general hospital.
	We have brought a very simple motion before the House today. This is not the moment to knock the Government particularly harshly, although it is clear that there is a continuum of culpability, which extends from the local decision makers to Ministers and, more significantly, calls into question Government policies. Our motion this evening does not seek to apportion blame for the Mid-Staffordshire tragedy. Indeed, every speaker has agreed with us and with our motion, other than the Minister and the honourable exception of the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright). He said that he would not vote against the motion. He remains to be convinced whether to join us in the Lobby and might just be able to be persuaded, and I hope to try.
	Our motion simply calls for an independent inquiry, which the relatives of those who died and the survivors of poor care at the trust both need and deserve. The important point is not just what went wrong, but how and why it dida point forcefully made by the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor), who, with his professional point of view, has a double interest in understanding thatand what must now be done to prevent it from happening again. That is a point to impress upon the hon. Member for Cannock Chase, because unless one understands the past, it is very difficult to move on and ensure that the right things are done for the future.
	Despite those wonderful NHS staff, Mid-Staffordshire and Stafford general hospital have been blighted, as my right hon. Friend the Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin) said in an intervention, when he gave personal testimony of the most wonderful care that his mother received. The problem extends way beyond the people in Staffordshire, but we heard powerful arguments from my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), whose speech not only carried the House, but was redolent of what it means to try to seek justice. He argued forcefully, using evidence that he was able to give only partially, but which would be available in a public inquiry, that the only way to secure that justice would be in a public and independent inquiry.
	The Government have said that they remain unconvinced, which carries the implication that they could be convinced, and we all hope that they will be, following tonight's debate. They will only have had to listen to the excellent speech of my hon. Friend. He asked directly whether the official Opposition would consider initiating an independent public inquiry, and I can tell him that we do not exclude the possibility of us, if we are in office, establishing such an independent public inquiry. However, I emphasise that today's debate is taking place because the people of Staffordshire and beyond want an inquiry to be set up now, so our efforts need to be focused on that, not least to persuade the Government to do just that.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) focused on the justice of the case, and on what lessons could be learned straight away, right across the NHS. He said that it was necessary to have an inquiry in order to assuage the public's concerns from the past and to learn all the necessary lessons for the future. With local and national health officials, Ministers and Government policy implicated in the problems, it is difficult to contend that a review conducted by officials in the Department of Health will deliver the thorough, all-encompassing, plain appraisal needed to reduce the chance of this happening again.

Ann Keen: I have said that I will not give way.
	The reality is that Sir George Alberti and Dr. Colin-Thom have agreed to present their findings about what happened at Stafford at a public meeting in Staffordshire. I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford is facilitating that meeting, and I congratulate him on that. He is aware of the importance of the recruitment of good-quality staff at Mid Staffordshire, and that issue was raised by the hon. Members for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), for Stone (Mr. Cash), for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor) and for Poole (Mr. Syms). My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) reminded the House of how we have to work together to see that these incidents do not happen again.
	If I go may into the heart of the problem at Mid Staffordshire, it is about reporting bad care and whistleblowing. Our next stage review by Lord Darzi is about quality and safety. We cannot have quality and safety in patient care, which is paramount to every health professional, if we do not have the appropriate work force. Every patient journey must start by having quality and being safe. We cannot have safety if we do not operate in an environment of an open culture and a management who show real leadership. That encouragement of leadership at all times throughout the review has raised the quality of leadership within the Mid Staffordshire trust.
	It was this Government who brought in a whistleblowing charter.  [Interruption.] Opposition Members may shout, but if they are concerned about the reality and quality of patient care and safety, I suggest that they work within the next stage review at all times, because the quality and safety of patient care are paramount. I appeal to the new leadership that is in place at Mid Staffordshire to get in place the consultants, nurses and health professionals who can provide a quality work force, so that they can lead quality patient care and so that Mid Staffordshire is known as a centre of excellence in future. We shall bring that about through our education and training system.
	The Prime Minister has commissioned a commission on nursing and midwifery, which I am privileged to chair. I shall attend Mid Staffordshire trust to consult nurses about how they feel things went wrong. With the serious comments that have been made in the House, we need to address why people did not feel they could report such serious incidents. From the top doctors to everyone else who works at the hospital, from the ward to the board, every one of us is responsible for patient care, and every one of us will continue to administer the quality and safety that our national health service should deliver, and that our patients have every right to expect us to deliver.
	 Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2), That the original words stand part of the Question.
	 The House proceeded to a Division.

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